UPDATE (12/28):On Jan. 1, Google was supposed to officially end support for the YouTube app on Fire TV devices. But Amazon may have decided to respond four days ahead of that date.

On Thursday, Fire TV devices started displaying a new YouTube app that launches the video streaming service through the Firefox or Silk browser. This occured after Amazon began rolling out the browsers across its media streaming players just over a week ago.

Amazon didn't directly comment on the change. In an email, a company spokesperson said: "At this time, all I can confirm is that YouTube and millions of other websites are accessible by using a web browser like Firefox or Silk on Fire TV."

Google didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Original story 12/5:

Google is pulling YouTube from Amazon's Echo Show and Fire TV devices over the online retailer's refusal to carry certain products from the search company.

In pulling the YouTube support, Google noted that its own products, Google Home and Chromecast, are not available for sale on Amazon. Chromecast used to be sold there, but was yanked in 2015. Last month, Amazon also stopped selling certain products from Nest, a company under Google's parent Alphabet.

"Given this lack of reciprocity, we are no longer supporting YouTube on Echo Show and Fire TV," Google said in an email on Tuesday.

According to Bloomberg, Google is pulling the plug on YouTube for Echo Show on Tuesday, and ending the Fire TV support on Jan. 1.

So Google's feud with Amazon just reached my living room. Got this screen when I launched YouTube on my Amazon Fire TV. pic.twitter.com/vtmcuBTtE9

In response, Amazon said, "Google is setting a disappointing precedent by selectively blocking customer access to an open website."

Both companies hope to resolve the dispute soon. In the meantime, the Echo Show and Fire TV will implement a workaround that will display the web-based view of YouTube.com, Amazon said.

The YouTube removal represents the latest flare-up between the two companies over access to each other's products. In September, Google briefly pulled YouTube from the Echo Show, claiming that Amazon's implementation of the video streaming service offered a broken user experience. Google was reportedly concerned that Amazon was using a "hacked version" of YouTube that stripped out key features Google needed to collect ad revenue.

Amazon didn't comment on why it doesn't offer certain Google products. But both Google Home and the Chromecast are direct competitors with Amazon's own smart speakers and digital media players.

In the company's Tuesday email, Google also complained that Amazon's Prime Video service isn't available for Google Cast users. (Amazon Video did arrive on Apple TV this week, though.)

The dispute probably won't sit well with consumers. Tech journalists are pointing out that users won't benefit from the bickering at all.

About the Author

Michael has been a PCMag reporter since October 2017. He previously covered tech news in China from 2010 to 2015, before moving to San Francisco to write about cybersecurity. He covers a variety of tech news topics, including consumer devices, digital privacy issues, computer hacking, artificial intelligence, online communities and gaming.
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